Bloomberg by the Numbers: 49

Jeanette Coleman, left, and Kawane Harris wave to supporters as they wait to get their marriage license outside the Manhattan City Clerk's office in New York.

That’s the percentage of Americans who favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, according to a survey from the Pew Center for the People & the Press.

Forty percent said they oppose same-sex marriage, an all-time low, according to the poll taken Oct. 24-28.

The 49 percent to 40 percent split in favor of same-sex marriage compares with a 38 percent to 52 percent split against same-sex marriage in Pew’s August 2008 survey.

Among those Americans who have reversed their opposition: President Barack Obama, who said in May that “personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

The Supreme Court will take up the issue of gay marriage “for the first time, agreeing to rule on a California ballot measure banning the practice and a federal law defining marriage as solely an opposite-sex union,” Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr reported Dec. 7.